


Interim

by orphan_account



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Anal Sex, Angst, Do Not Archive (The Magnus Archives), Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Rough Oral Sex, Spanking, Strangulation, Web! Martin, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-06
Updated: 2019-08-06
Packaged: 2020-08-10 20:34:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 7
Words: 21,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20141584
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Peter Lukas is interim director of The Magnus Institute. He's taken a special interest in Jonathan Sims.As Jon becomes increasingly isolated, will the other archival staff notice what's actually wrong with him? Can they save him?AU starting post s3, graphic depictions of violence. Please read with care.





	1. Chapter 1

It doesn’t hurt as much any more. It’s not like the first time: which is still an incident Jon can barely make sense of, beyond the hurricane of pain and fear and anger and humiliation that swallows any clear memory he tries to piece together of the events. Peter’s breathing is heavy, and the desk under Jon’s back creaks, and he’s distantly aware of papers poking at his bare shoulder blade, making it itch. He doesn’t need his shirt off, not really. What Peter does to him on these days is hardly what could be considered ‘making love’. Jon flinches at a particularly hard thrust, his soft cock limp on his abdomen, Peter’s fingers laying bruises over the ones that are already tattooed into his hips. Sometimes Jon wonders if they’ll ever fade.

He doesn’t scream any more. He clenches his teeth, and his toes curl, and he can feel every inch of his body bound too tight - as if by sheer tension alone it will be able to keep Peter out. But it can’t and it doesn’t and instead Peter pushes Jon’s thighs open wider, and moves one hand to press down firmly on Jon’s abdomen as he changes his angle. His cock slams into Jon, hard and hot and splitting him apart. A quiet, helpless whimper escapes from between Jon’s clenched teeth, and Peter - sweating and red, smiles widely. Jon wonders how long it will take this time. 

He looks at the clock, but the hands don’t move. 

Five minutes and 48 seconds later, something that isn’t his brain provides, Peter cums inside him, hot and sticky and spilling over onto the desk and Jon’s thighs. Jon hates this, of course he does, lying still as Peter milks himself over Jon’s ass and cock and thighs, pupils blown wide with arousal. But he prefers this to when Peter cums on his face, taking his time to rub his wet cock over Jon’s cheeks and jaw and nose and eyes, smearing the mess over his skin whilst Jon sits there and lets him. It’s better than when Peter makes him swallow, pinching his nose and holding his jaw shut. He hardly needs to any more, Jon has long since stopped fighting. Jon thinks that he just does it for the violence, the blatant display of control. 

In the present, Peter has finished buckling his belt, and raises his eyebrows at Jon - breathless and bruised on his desk. “What did we learn, Archivist?” 

Jon swallows, and tries to clear his throat. It takes a moment. He thinks perhaps he swallowed down more pain than usual, this time. “I will not be late again.” 

Peter’s expression folds into the thousand creases of an easy, gentle smile, and Jon hates him. “Very good. Go on now, you have work to do. And you might want to clean yourself up.” The corner of his mouth curves in amusement. “Wouldn’t want the others learning what a cheap little whore you are, now would you?”

Jon knows this is deliberate. He knows that it’s just to get a rise out of him. But it doesn’t stop the blood from flushing to his face anyway as he tries to get up. Sitting hurts, really anything that shifts weight onto his tailbone. He gingerly stretches his legs down to the floor, trying to focus on the cramp in his thighs instead of the burning in his ass. Cum drips down his legs, cold and viscous and stinking. Jon sets the balls of his feet on the ground and takes a deep, shuddering breath, and tries to come back into himself again - distantly cataloguing the return of sensation: the cool wood and leather of the desk, the papers tickling the side of his wrist, the fabric of his trousers on the floor, just under the sole of his foot. 

Peter clicks his tongue. “Come now Archivist, we don’t have all day. Or should we schedule another meeting about doing things promptly?” 

Jon shakes his head, too fast, and Peter laughs and Jon hates him for it. But he shoves that down, and stands and ignores the pain, grabbing a flannel from his bag and wiping brusquely at the cum sticking to his lower half. It’s dry and coarse and scratches, but the sensation is a welcome relief. 

Jon didn’t used to bring a bag. 

He pulls on his boxers and trousers once he’s gotten rid of the worst of it, and hurriedly buttons his shirt. He doesn’t wear ties any more. Peter had too many...creative uses for them. Once he’s finished with the shirt, he tugs a heavy, shapeless woolen jumper over his head. For the first time since the assault began, Jon feels something like himself. 

He bends, ignores the blaze of pain at the base of his spine when he does so, and picks up his bag, looking at Peter. “May I go?” Peter raises his eyebrows. Jon takes a deep breath, and lets it out slowly. “May I go please, sir?”

Peter nods, expression still pleasant, as if they’d just been discussing accounts, and he hadn’t been brutally fucking Jon into his desk. “I’ll be seeing you soon, Archivist, I’m sure. But do try to stay out of trouble this time.” 

Jon wants to throw up. But it’s more important that he leaves, quickly, and he does. There have been times when he hasn’t been fast enough, and Peter has grown bored, and forced him back inside for an extra ‘lesson’ before he goes. Jon tries not to think about those times. Instead, he walks briskly out of Peter’s office - past the splintered and silent tape recorder, and into the dimly lit corridor beyond. 

Jon is five or six metres away when the door finally shuts with an echoing bang. He doesn’t slow, but a little of the tension drawing his shoulders painfully high loosens. He focuses on his own shuddering breathing, and hurries for the Archives. 

* * *

He bumps into Martin on his way, because of course he does. Jon isn’t sure whether he wants to laugh or cry. He keeps seeing Martin lately - he hadn’t seen him at all before he’d met Peter for the first time, and even after that he’d barely been able to keep Martin with him for more than a politely detached sentence or two. But for some reason, every time he’s coming back from one of Peter’s...lessons - Martin is there. Jon suspects the Beholding, or possibly the Web, but whether this is their misguided attempt to help or just a different way to taunt him - and drink in his fear, and pain, and humiliation - he isn’t sure. His cynicism says it’s the latter. He may well be valuable to the Beholding, but he doubts that it cares much about his feelings. 

He hadn’t seen Martin coming, so they nearly bump into each other - Martin startling as Jon stumbles back, murmuring an apology and hoping desperately that he can move on quickly. He has a system, now, after he learned that Peter did not take kindly to his going home to shower (and weep, and shake). He boils water in the kitchen, and keeps a basin in his office. He has a flannel, and he locks the door. It’s not ideal, but it’s better than sitting in the filth. He has a spare change of clothes, and a towel, and he needs them - so badly his skin itches. He can feel a little of Peter’s cum sticking to the inside of his thigh. He doesn’t want Martin to see him like this. 

“Jon? Are you alright?” Martin’s expression says he thinks he has the answer to that question - and Jon has learned over time to begrudgingly find his excessive concern somewhat endearing. Now, his blood just runs cold. He exists to see and be seen, but he doesn’t want Martin to See this. 

He shakes his head. “No, Martin, I’m fine. And really rather busy, actually, so if you don’t mind letting me - ,” it’s a cheap trick, letting his old bluster and petulance spill into his tone. It’s rude and cruel and selfish, and he registers the flash of surprise on Martin’s features and saves it to torture himself with later. Then he tries to walk away. Martin’s hand closes around his arm, and Jon’s mind fills too fast with memories. (Peter’s fingers around his wrists squeezing too tight, pushing him against a wall or against his desk or twisting his arms behind his back until his shoulders hurt, ignoring Jon’s struggling, his pleading, his cries of pain).

Jon flinches violently away, and Martin lets go immediately, and Jon is unspeakably grateful to him for that. “Jon. What’s going on?” Martin’s voice is lower than usual, in that tone of his that brooks no room for disagreement and so often surprises those who’ve made the mistake of underestimating him. 

Jon swallows, though his mouth is dry. “Nothing, Martin, I’m fine.”

“You’re limping.” Martin says flatly, and Jon is grateful for the shadows of the halls down here that will do something to conceal his flush. He thought he’d done a better job of hiding that. “And you’ve never flinched like that. Not from me. Not even after you came back from your...travels.”

“My kidnappings, you mean?” Jon clarifies, disinterested and so very, very tired. Martin steps closer, closing the distance between them again, but makes no move to touch him this time. He meets his eyes. Martin has nice eyes, Jon thinks. A green-brown cloudy hazel he used to think was muddy, but now feels as safe and reassuring as country lanes and hedgerows and long walks in the open air. 

“Jon - please. I’m worried about you. Tell me what’s going on.” 

Martin cannot compel him. Jon thinks perhaps that’s the only way he could tell him at this point. He ignores the thousand voices in his brain screaming at him to say something - to tell Martin everything, to fall into his arms and shout and scream and weep. To turn on Peter, and the Institute if he had to. To be free and safe and clean. 

Jon pushes all of that away, and focuses instead on one memory - a clear one, that had happened just after he’d bumped into Martin for the first time after one of his sessions with Peter. Peter had appeared seemingly from nowhere and requested Jon’s presence in his office. He’d offered Martin a handful of half hearted excuses, and Jon had kept quiet, and 10 minutes later, with his hands bound tight enough to hurt behind his back whilst Peter split him open all over again - Peter had pointed out, very calmly, that he could be doing this to Martin instead. If he mattered so much to Jon - enough to make Jon defy him - perhaps the better lesson was to hurt Martin and make Jon watch. His master would like that, wouldn’t it? 

Jon begged then. He hadn’t done that in a long time, not for the weeks that Peter had kept him so firmly under his control. Not since the first times. But he begged then. And eventually Peter conceded that he wouldn’t take Martin - not this time. But the threat lingered in the air. And that session was a long one. One that left Jon bleeding, and barely able to walk. 

So now he looks at Martin - all soft lines and mussed curls and hedgerow eyes, Martin with tea and concern and tenderness and poetry and misplaced protectiveness radiating out of him like a solar flare. And Jon imagines Martin laid bare and broken and used. He imagines having to watch him break. 

Jon straightens his spine and stands taller and ignores the way it hurts a little. He cannot save himself. But he will save Martin Blackwood.

So he scowls and says, instead, “it’s fine Martin. Now please let me get back to work.” And he turns on his heel and leaves before Martin can disagree because he’s not sure how much longer he’ll be able to hold out for. 

Martin says his name, all the same, and it echoes down the tunnel. When he blinks he can see Martin’s expression - as if, he thinks somewhat hysterically, he had eyes in the back of his head. It’s conflicted - his brow wrinkled like ruched fabric, his mouth tight with frustration, lips pursed in concern. But he lets Jon go. 

Jon hopes he can thank him for that, one day.


	2. Chapter 2

“Something’s wrong.” Jon jumps at Basira’s voice, and looks up to see her standing in the doorway to his office - her hands free for once of a well-thumbed, battered paperback from the library. Collecting himself, he glances down at the statement he’d been about to read. 

It’s been three days since the incident with Martin, but Jon still feels unused to this level of company. He certainly hasn’t seen Basira in...weeks? Months? His ‘arrangement’ with Peter has been going on for two months, one week and one day now. He’s not sure he’s seen Basira more than twice since it started. 

“Basira. I was actually about to - ,” Jon gestures with the paper and doesn’t bother finishing his sentence. He expects her to leave. Instead, Basira folds her arms and leans against the doorframe. 

“I still haven’t met Peter Lukas, you know.” She says it matter of factly, as if they were talking about ordinary office politics and not whatever the hell this was. Jon’s grip tightens around the statement, crumpling the paper a little.

“How unfortunate for you.” He manages to shove the words out between his teeth. He doesn’t want to think about Peter. He doesn’t want to think about the fact that he’s already late, and that means, that means - Jon can’t bring himself to finish the thought.

“Hm.” Basira’s response is flat and indecipherable. 

Jon huffs at her, and hopes it disguises the way his hands have started to shake as he watches the clock on his phone tick over to the next minute. “Basira, I really need to work.” Jon lets some of the urgency he’s feeling bleed into his words, and the static energy in what’s left of his soul surges up to meet his need - then stalls, finding nowhere to go without an appropriate line of questioning. The hairs on Jon’s arms stand on end as if he’d been rubbing a balloon. 

“What’s he doing to you?” Again, Basira’s tone is calm, and level, and almost disinterested. Most people wouldn’t notice the hint of suspicion in her dark brown eyes, the tension in the line of her jaw, the way she’s carefully keeping her fingers loose and uncurled instead of letting them form fists at her sides. Most people wouldn’t notice. But Jon is very observant. 

He swallows down the bile at the back of his throat - he hates lying. Especially for Peter. Though he supposes this is as much for himself, and the illusion which constitutes all that remains of his pride. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” 

Basira huffs a laugh, and it’s mirthless and irritated. “Sure, Jon.”

Jon looks at his phone. He’s six minutes late. Peter is going to - the shaking gets worse. “Basira, seriously, I need to work.”

“Right. Of course. You look like shit. So go ahead, shoot up.” Jon wishes his looks had more to do with the statements - but he’s been getting plenty thanks to how hard Peter has had him working. He almost feels, full? And there’s no stirring of curiosity when he looks at the piece of paper in his hand. But this is an easy lie. 

“Indeed. I suppose we’ll have time to worry about that later.” 

Basira huffs another laugh that isn’t really a laugh, and turns to leave. But she pauses in the doorframe. “Listen, Jon. I don’t trust you.”

It’s Jon’s turn to laugh now, coughing out a chuckle that’s more painful than bitter. “Yes, Basira I - ,”

Basira interrupts him. “I don’t trust you. But I still remember liking you. I did consider you a friend. You were funny. You still are, sometimes, under all the bullshit.” 

Jon wants to snap something sharp, something to make her back off, something defensive. But his mind is blank, and instead he just listens and tries not to think about how deeply her words are sinking into him. Basira’s hand, he notices, has briefly curled into a loose fist. 

“So if Peter Lukas was hurting you, or giving you any kind of trouble - I’d want to know. And I’d want to help. Because we’re - because we were friends. And my allegiance is to you, not him. Not the Eye, either, mind. But to you. To the person that you were.” She looks up then, and meets his eyes, and Jon tries to sift through everything she’s said and figure out an appropriate response.

“I’m still me, Basira. I’m still a person.” 

Basira looks away from him. Her hand uncurls. She shrugs. “Yeah. Maybe. See you around Jon.” 

Then she’s gone. And Jon is alone. Again. He can feel the fog creeping in, invisible and cold and cloying. It sticks to his skin like unwanted kisses and leaves him in a cold sweat. Jon doesn’t want to be alone. He wants to shake off the sticking, creeping feeling of solitude as it slips over him like a damp shroud. 

But he’s tried that. It didn’t work.

So instead, Jon glances at the tape recorder. It switches itself on, and he almost smiles. There’s something reassuring about the fact that this, at least, hasn’t changed. He glances at the clock on his phone. He’s 11 minutes late. He hardly needs to look at his computer to know that Peter has sent him an email, requesting his presence once he’s finished with this statement. Jon wants to throw up again.

But the tape recorder is rolling, rattling expectantly. And Jon can feel the Eye of something huge watching him. It’s still terrifying - but there’s a comfort to this terror. It’s almost possessive. It’s not like the loneliness, which seems to want both to claim him for its own and wipe him from existence entirely. 

Jon wonders if anyone would notice if he disappeared. 

The tape recorder screeches, and he startles, then looks down at the piece of paper in his hand. 

“Statement of Carol Rodriguez, regarding a swimming pool at the bottom of her garden. Statement taken on the 1st July, 2002. Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, The Archivist. Statement begins.”

After that, he’s lost in someone else’s mind. And even through the terror, it’s comforting, for a while, to be able to step outside of himself.

* * *

“Get on your knees.” Jon hates this. But he knew Peter would be angry. He thought about Basira - the protectiveness she’d tried so hard to hide .The ember of warmth it has rekindled in his chest. The memory of the friendship they’d once shared, when they’d met and had nothing more complicated to deal with than a dead Archivist. Jon thinks, perhaps, that it was worth it. 

And besides, they were due another ‘lesson’ - he doesn’t normally go more than three days any more without Peter pulling him up on some slight, imagined or real. Jon has long since passed wondering whether Peter wants to hurt him. He knows that now, deep in his bones. He looks at the older man: broad shouldered and strong, with a mess of salt and paper hair and stubble that scratches when he kisses you, weather beaten wrinkled skin and grey-blue eyes. Jon supposes he could be handsome, were the cruelty that lay inside him not so transparent in his every movement and expression. Jon wonders whether Peter wants to break him. He wonders whether he’s broken already. He certainly feels like he’s lost. 

“I said get on your knees.” There’s a note of warning in Peter’s voice now, cold and hard like a meat cleaver on an oesophagus. Jon glances back at the door to Peter’s office. It’s still open - normally Peter would have shut it by now. People could see. Which was very likely the point, come to think of it. 

Jon feels blood rushing up into his cheeks and sees Peter’s smile widen and wishes he could stop himself, somehow. But he’s waited too long already, and he knows nothing good will come of making Peter even angrier than he already is. So he drops to his knees, and tries not to think about how small it makes him feel. Peter’s hand sinks into his hair, and Jon’s spine prickles with unease. He shuts his eyes, and heaves a long, shaking breath. 

“Good boy.” Peter murmurs, roughly grabbing at Jon’s hair, running his fingers through it whilst he unbuckles his belt. With one hand in Jon’s hair, and the door to his office still wide open, Peter undoes his zipper. Jon’s stomach flips at the sound. If he never heard it again, it’d be too soon. Peter slips his half-hard cock out of his boxers and begins to stroke it, lazily, pushing Jon’s head back and forth, sometimes twisting his fingers in his hair and pulling so hard it brings tears to his eyes. Jon lets his hands lie in fists in his thighs and just tries to breathe. He can survive this. He’s survived worse. 

“You’re such a well behaved little slut, Archivist. And you look so good on your knees for me.” Jon doesn’t want to hear Peter - doesn’t want to feel the cold, clinging press of loneliness sinking into his bones like a chilling fog. But every time he starts to drift away Peter pulls his hair, hard, and he’s brought rudely back into the present. His knees used to hurt when he did this. It’s amazing how fast you can get used to things.

“Now then, Archivist. I want us to play a little game. You’re going to Watch. If you See anyone coming down this corridor, then you’ll give me three taps. If you don’t, well...” Peter’s smile is the flash of a knife in a dark alley. “I’m sure we could invite them to join in. Perhaps one of the library staff would like to join me, and we could fill you up the way you deserve. Or maybe I’ll have my wicked way with Basira. I wonder what would make her break? Or what about Martin? Do you think he’d cry? Do you think he’d beg you to help him?” 

Jon isn’t sure whether it’s anger or fear that spills over and pushes him to speak. Possibly both. But when he does reply, he does so with an authority and power he doesn’t feel. “I understand, Peter. I’ll Watch.” 

Peter watches him, eyes hooded, as if he’s deciding whether or not to let that tone slide. But then he pats Jon’s head, and smiles that easy, lying smile. “Very good. Well then. Open wide, Jon.” 

Jon does, forcing himself to look at the length of Peter’s thick cock, erect and flushed red now, head slick with precum. His mouth twists, but he opens it, and lets Peter guide his head forward, pushing Jon’s mouth onto his waiting cock. Jon tries to get used to the bitter, salty warmth of it. Then he starts to suck, running his tongue up the base and flicking it just under the head. Peter hums, pushing Jon’s head into his groin, and Jon ignores the scratch of his pubes and focuses on swirling his tongue around the soft, heavy, too cold mass of Peter’s dick. 

He didn’t used to do this. He thought it was an indignity too far. He thought he could negotiate those small boundaries. But Peter taught him differently. Jon knows it will be easier, later, if he does this well now. So he tries. And whilst he does, he Watches. 

It’s not difficult to See the corridor outside Peter’s office - a corridor which is blessedly empty for now. Seeing anything at the Institute comes as easily as breathing, and he hardly needs to pull on any power to do so. Jon does, anyway, checking on Martin, and Basira, and Melanie. Just to see if he can, he stretches to Georgie. She’s in her kitchen making tea, and the Admiral is on the counter. Jon almost wants to smile.

Which, of course, is when Peter shoves himself deep into Jon’s throat - his hands holding Jon’s head firmly whilst Jon struggles, terrified of choking or suffocating on his own vomit. For a moment, that’s all there is, the primal fear of suffocation and Peter’s cock - too big and too cold and too deep, lodged in Jon’s throat and pushing at it gently whilst he gags. Jon’s lungs try to expand, and they can’t, and he remembers to breathe through his nose. It doesn’t do much, but he thinks he feels a little less lightheaded, and he looks up at Peter - Peter who is beaming with delight. Jon can feel helpless tears of pain and panic tickling his cheeks and jaw. He tries to pull back, to dislodge the thing in his throat, but Peter shakes his head and tuts. With one hand still firmly, painfully holding his head in place, Peter’s other hand moves to massage Jon’s throat. 

Jon wants to push him away, but he’s terrified of what Peter will do if he does. So instead he stares up at him, at his eyes dark with arousal, as Peter paws and fumbles at his throat, pushing the sensitive skin until his cock slides an extra millimetre deeper inside him. John tries to whimper, and chokes. His stomach rolls. More tears spill down his cheeks. 

Peter’s smile is gone now, his expression intent. “That’s right, Archivist. Choke on me.” He starts to move, hips rolling in shallow thrusts, pushing too far down Jon’s throat, suffocating him. It hurts more than anything Peter’s done to his mouth before. Jon’s jaw aches, and his lips sting, stretched too far and too wide. He can feel himself starting to get dizzy, knows what little oxygen he’s getting through his nose will not be enough if this goes on much longer. And still Peter moves, slow and leisurely, relishing the absolute control he has over Jon in this moment. Jon wonders just how obscene he must look: face red, chin and cheeks dripping with saliva and pre-cum, mouth stretched too wide around Peter’s cock, throat bulging with it. Half-frantic, he checks the corridor. It is still, blessedly empty. 

Jon barely has time to be relieved by this, because now black spots are appearing at the corners of his eyes. He almost welcomes them. He doesn’t think Peter would stop, if he passed out. But at least he wouldn’t have to feel it. Jon feels his face turning from red to purple, feels himself starting to shake. After far, far too long - Jon’s vision is blurring and he thinks he may not pass out, that he might just die instead - and what a humiliating obituary that would be, asphyxiating on another man’s penis. Jon is almost resigned to it - almost wishing that the moment would come more quickly, half inclined to call on the End and beg it to take him. 

But then Peter shoves his head back, too fast and too rough. His cock comes free of Jon’s mouth with a slick pop, saliva and cum hanging in sticky strings between its head and Jon’s lips. The new tape recorder in the room snaps.

And then Jon is gasping and choking and coughing, chest heaving as he’s given over to animal instinct, sobbing through the burning in his throat and the ache in his chest as his lungs finally, finally fill again. Peter’s smell and taste are thick in every breath Jon heaves into his shuddering chest, but he can hardly care. He can breathe. He doubles over, tears streaming down his face, barely conscious of Peter still stroking himself as he watches. 

But what he does notice, sudden and sharp and clear as a siren, is Martin - walking down the corridor outside, alerted by Jon’s sounds of distress as he returned from his favourite cafe. Eyes still blurred with tears and sweat, Jon reaches out blindly and taps Peter three times, gasping hoarsely. “Martin.” 

It barely takes Peter a second to close and lock the door. It’s barely enough. Martin knocks a moment later. Jon can see now, wiping impatiently at his eyes with a weak arm. Peter is still stroking himself with one hand, and he smiles at Jon, putting one finger to his lips. Jon glares at him and tries to breathe. 

After a moment, in which Jon breathes through the bruising in his throat and the aching in his chest, and Peter leisurely fucks his hand, Martin knocks again. This time he speaks. “Mr Lukas? Is everything ok? I thought I heard Jon - ,”

“Everything is fine, Martin. I’m just finishing up a little private business.” As Peter speaks, he steps forward, winding his fingers into Jon’s hair and pushing his head back, pressing his cock to his lips. Jon hesitates, but Peter gives him a look, and reluctantly he lets him slip his cock back inside his mouth. 

“Is Jon there?” Martin continues, oblivious. “Because I really could’ve sworn I heard him.” Jon doubts that Peter notices, but there’s a sharp edge in Martin’s tone now, one that comes into his voice when he knows he’s being lied to. One that promises that he will discover the truth, eventually. 

But Jon is distracted. He hadn’t been able - hadn’t wanted to do anything other than let Peter use his mouth, not with Martin so close. But a sharp, hard twist of Peter’s hand in his hair tells him that will not be good enough. Flushing with shame, eyes tearing up again with pointless humiliation, Jon begins again to suck Peter’s cock - trying to do so as quietly as possible. From the corner of his eye, he can see Martin’s shadow under the door. 

Peter replies to Martin. “Oh no, I sent Jon on a little... errand. Had to do with mouths, I believe. Nasty business.” Peter winks at him, and Jon’s cheeks burn. 

Jon can hear Martin outside, shuffling. It takes less effort than a heartbeat to See him, just outside the door, brow furrowed in irritation and concern.

He thinks this is worse. At least when the others were far away, he could pretend that they were somehow separate to all this. That there was one world, in which Peter did these things to him, and another, in which he was the Archivist. Martin wasn’t supposed to be in this one. Because that made this one real. It made it part of his life. A part he couldn’t escape. Jon stifles the sob that tries to rise in him at that, and half heartedly runs his tongue up Peter’s cock. 

Martin clears his throat, in that way that Jon knows means he’s noticed that he’s being ignored. “Actually, Mr Lukas, I’d really like to talk to you. It’s about some field work I was doing recently. I think it’ll be of great interest to you, sir.” Martin is lying, and Jon would be half amazed at his gall. But there’s a flash of irritation in Peter’s eyes, and a sudden rush of cold wind, and Jon can suddenly See a great, grey abyss opening behind Martin’s undefended back. 

He can’t let this happen. Jon shoves himself back and away from Peter, trying not to wonder whether Martin heard the slick sound of Peter’s cock slipping from his lips. Instead he shakes his head at Peter, and presses his hands together, and begs him, silently, not to do this. Outside the door, Martin shivers, unaware - and the void rages. 

Peter’s mouth curls into a lazy smile, like a cat with its mouth full of canary. Then he gestures Jon forwards. Jon complies. He lets Peter push his head back into his cock, lets him start to fuck his mouth, too fast and too rough for Jon to do anything but try and mind his teeth. Breathless, Peter raises his voice to Marin. “I’m sure whatever it is, you can tell me in an email.” 

The void continues to roar with a sound that is the opposite of noise at Martin’s back. Jon feels sweat trickling down his spine. His mouth feels rubbed raw, and his throat and jaw ache. Peter’s never used him like this for so long. 

Martin’s voice comes through the door, persistent and a little confused. “Mr Lukas? You. You sound out of breath.” 

Jon looks up at Peter, wondering what his game is, why he hasn’t just dismissed Martin.

But then Peter smiles down at him, and Jon understands. He wants Martin to be there. He wants Jon to know that he’s there. He wants him to be afraid of what he could do to him. Rage rises in him so fast and so powerful that Jon barely has time to try and stop it. There’s a plastic rattle, and a rustle of fabric. Peter pulls Jon’s head into his groin, pushing his cock down Jon’s throat again, and Jon tenses on instinct - trying to pull back. It’s pointless of course. Peter is stronger than he looks, and he looks strong. He forces Jon to be still, and take him as he chokes. Jon tries to do so quietly. 

Outside, Martin has grown quiet. Then he says. “Mr Lukas, why is there a tape recorder outside your office?” 

Jon thinks that Peter would have been angrier, but it’s at that moment that he cums, deep in Jon’s throat. Jon tries to choke and can’t, gagged by Peter’s cock as he spills his hot seed into Jon’s convulsing body with a long, quiet sigh. Helplessly, tears running down his cheeks, Jon swallows. Then Peter pulls back, and shoots the rest of his load over Jon’s face, milking his cock lazily before using it to push against Jon’s cheeks, and nose, and eyes, smearing the mess over his skin. 

Jon thinks of Martin outside and lets him. He thinks, probably, Peter has broken him by now. Jon is so distracted that he doesn’t notice the void flicker and fade, or Martin, walking quickly away - not until some minutes later, by which time Martin has left the corridor entirely. 

Jon checks on him - sees, with relief, that he’s safely downstairs, clutching the tape recorder. Then Peter is pulling him up by his hair and shoving him out of the door. “Go, Archivist. Before I change my mind about your little friend.” 

Jon stumbles into the corridor, and the door slams behind him. He tries to remember how to breathe. It was never this difficult before. 


	3. Chapter 3

Jon doesn’t want to see Georgie. But after 19 missed calls over the course of five days, he’s not sure he has much of a choice. On the contrary, he’s fairly certain that if they get to call number 20, Georgie will come storming into the Institute with a handful of fireworks and murder on her mind. She and Melanie have that in common, though Jon imagines that Melanie would leap directly to grenades, these days.

Regardless, Georgie will not let him ignore her for much longer. So Jon comes up with what he hopes is a decent excuse to leave the Institute, resigns himself to the idea that Peter won’t accept it, boxes the distant horror in a dusty part of his mind and shoves it away. He can pretend. Just for now. Just for an hour or two. He doesn’t know how else he’s supposed to survive. 

Stepping out onto the street feels like remembering how to breathe with both his lungs again, when he’d only been using one. Jon’s chest heaves, and he squints at the light, and he drinks in the sounds and the sights hungrily - feasting for both his own pleasure and that of the thing that lurks inside him. He feels strength course through his veins, and with it adrenaline and endorphins. Peter be damned. In this moment, he is free.

Jon walks down the steps two at a time, humming. 

It doesn’t take him long to find the cafe he’d suggested. He’d suggested it specifically because it was close enough to the Institute that he could get back in an emergency. He had not chosen it for the atmosphere, which he regretted as soon as he approached the place - all polished white counters and trendy monochrome signs. Stepping inside, he was hit by the noise of slightly too loud alternative rock and the bitter, burned taste of fresh coffee. 

Jon blinked owlishly in the glare of the fluorescent lights bouncing off white faux marble surfaces. He hears Georgie’s laugh before he sees her, soft and warm. Jon turns in her direction, and blinks. She’s wearing a mustard yellow shirt, covered in a pattern of black and white penguins, under an old set of denim dungarees she’s had at least as long as he’s known her. She’s his best friend, and she’s safe, and he’s missed her. 

Jon clumsily pulls up a steel, polished chair, and ignores how uncomfortable it is. Georgie raises an eyebrow at him, holding up the menu, full of puns on obscure band names. “This isn’t what I’d have called your scene, Jon.” 

Jon shrugs, squinting at the menu, and wonders whether “Tea-zer” is meant to be tea, and also simply what band it’s supposed to be in reference to. Vaguely, he replies to Georgie, brushing off her gentle teasing. “I’m afraid it was the most convenient place I could find at short notice.”

A too-thin young woman with short black hair comes over to their table. She’s wearing a band t-shirt. Jon isn’t sure what band it’s supposed to be - but the intricate geometric design that makes up the band’s logo is unsettling. She smiles at them with too many teeth, and Jon and Georgie order, quickly. Then she winks at Jon. “It’s on the house. For an old friend.”

Bewildered, Jon watches her go whilst Georgie snorts. “Get you, Casanova. Careful, if you let your colleagues know you have the capacity for social skills they’ll have your head on a stick for not sharing sooner.” 

Jon shakes his head, still distracted. There was something about that woman. Something that made his head hurt. Had she been wearing a wig? He lifts his hand to fiddle with his cuff and feels something tickle his wrist. A thin, frayed piece of grey cotton. He brushes it away, and doesn’t give it a second thought. 

He clears his throat. “I’ve never met her before in my life.”

Georgie blinks, and her thick eyebrows climb towards her messy hairline. She leans forward and speaks in a hushed whisper. “You don’t think she’s going to like. Poison your tea or something, do you?”

Well, he hadn’t been. But now. Jon glances sharply towards the kitchen and lets himself See what’s inside. It’s busy, mostly. Jon had worked in service once, but only as a waiter. He hadn’t had the temperament to work back of house, where tempers flared fast and briefly and anyone worth their salt had biceps of steel from mixing dough and thick stews every day. What this meant was that it took Jon a moment to figure out exactly what was going on. One of the waiters, a man with bright copper hair, was chatting enthusiastically to the kitchen porter, who had their arms elbow deep in dirty dishes. A junior chef was texting next to a rack of drying dishes, and another was tying on her apron and striding out into the kitchen.

Jon shifted his Gaze, to the bar, and saw a bored young man and woman chatting to each other as they watched the customers, whilst two more staff wandered the tables. The woman - with blonde, close cropped hair and a septum piercing - was making his tea. There was nothing out of the ordinary about it.

Jon slumps in his seat, partly from relief and mostly from exhaustion. George’s gentle amusement freezes into worry, sharp and jagged. “Jon? Are you alright?”

Half-heartedly, Jon waves her off. “I’m fine. Just,” he pauses, searching for the word. “Tired. I’m tired.” It’s not really a lie. 

Georgie frowns, glancing out the window. There aren’t many people on the street outside: this isn’t exactly a peak time for restaurants, and most are still at work or home or elsewhere. After a moment of staring at the dark brown bricks of the building opposite them, Georgie turns back to Jon. 

“Basira’s worried about you.” 

Jon frowns. “I thought you didn’t like Basira.”

“I don’t.” Georgie shrugs. “Though I think she likes me. Or, respects me, at least. After that whole thing with Oliver Banks at the hospital.” 

As he often does, Jon finds his mind full of too many questions. He starts with one, “Oliver Banks?” And then segues into another, choosing the more immediate need. “Basira’s been in contact?” 

Georgie winds her hands together, frowning down at them as if they’re a knot she can untie if she thinks about it long enough. “Only recently. Melanie, too.” Now Georgie looks at him, hazel eyes almost copper in the fluorescent light. “She’s Changed, hasn’t she?”

Jon thinks of the bullet. He nods. “Yes. She has.”

Georgie doesn’t look surprised. Jon supposes that’s a good thing. A different waitress delivers their drinks, and Georgie wraps her hands around her latte but doesn’t drink it. She glances out of the window again. Jon drinks a sip of tea to give himself an excuse not to fill the silence, and feels like a coward even as it burns his tongue. 

“What’s going on?” Georgie’s voice is quiet. 

Jon shrugs, wishing he could ignore the gravity of her concern. But it’s there and he Knows it’s there because he can See it. He can’t not. He’s known Georgie for too long and too well not to see every inch of her soul, and it’s taking all he has to avoid looking past the immediate present. “The usual nonsense. I thought you didn’t want to know.” He doesn’t entirely mean for the accusatory tone to slip into his voice, but it’s there anyway. 

Georgie bites her lip, and takes a sip of her coffee. She’s searching for words, and it means Jon can’t get much more from her than a powerful sense of unease, and worry, and affection. Jon is half surprised to find the lattermost emotion, having assumed he’d long since worn out any friendly feeling Georgie had borne towards him. Despite himself, he finds his chest flooded with sudden warmth for his friend: with her calloused palms and freckled cheeks and array of slender silver piercings. 

Then Georgie says, “Martin’s worried too, you know.” 

“I know for a fact that you don’t -“ Jon doesn’t quite realise he’s raising his voice, he doesn’t mean to, it’s mostly just surprise. Because he knew Martin and Georgie didn’t get along. It had bothered him, once, before he had more horrifying things to worry about and became more concerned with keeping them both alive.

Georgie interrupts him. “Actually, I don’t mind him.” Her mouth curves into an amused smile. “But he definitely has it in for me. I think he’s jealous.” Her grin is unmistakable now, and she takes a sip of coffee, eyes bright as she looks at Jon and enjoys his moment of discomfort.

Jon clears his throat. “Yes, well -,” 

Georgie rolls her eyes. “Don’t. Don’t give me the excuses. You can do that with anyone else, but you can’t fool me, Jonathan Sims. I know you. I know you better than anyone.” 

Jon thinks it’s possible that’s true. He wonders whether it should bother him. Instead, he says, “so that’s why you were so eager to see me? I assure you, I am alive and unharmed, and not in any immediate,” he pauses, thinking about how to say this honestly, “life-threatening peril. Which is better than usual, actually.” That’s true. It leaves out the pain, and the humiliation, and the anger and the grief and the helplessness and most of all the great, all encompassing fear. But Peter won’t kill him. Not on Elias’ watch, and Jon is quite certain that whilst Elias may be in prison, he is undoubtedly still Watching. In the context of Jon’s current predicament, it makes him hate Elias more than anything else has - even more than what he did to Martin. And Jon didn’t think he had the capacity for a hatred deeper than that. 

Georgie looks at him, and her eyes are sharp and clear and bright with intelligence. Which, of course, was what had made him like her so much in the first place. “And what about non-life-threatening peril? What about danger that just really, really hurts?” 

For half a second, Jon is terrified that she knows - that the others have figured it out, and that they’ve just elected Georgie as the person best suited to break it to him gently. He flushes, and in a moment of panic, he Looks. But all he sees in Georgie’s head is worry: worry about how pale he is, and how thin, how he clearly hasn’t been eating or sleeping enough, and obviously hasn’t had a shower in days. She knows something is wrong, certainly, but she has no idea what. 

And Jon hates that she’s in pain and he hates that he won’t tell her, even knowing how much it hurts her not to know. But he thinks of Peter Lukas, taking away the one person he’d known before all of this, making her disappear into a place he could never find her again. And Jonathan Sims is a selfish man, and he won’t let that happen. 

So he pulls on a soft smile, one he doesn’t need supernatural powers to know she likes, and he reaches across the table and touches her hand - because whatever Peter has done to Jon’s capacity to touch others, Georgie will always be safe. So Jon touches her hand, and smiles, and lies. “I’m fine. I promise.” 

Later, when their waitress brings them the bill, there’s a note at the bottom. Jon nearly misses it: but the hand drawn smiley face next to the note telling them who their server was has 8 neatly dotted eyes, and that’s enough to make him pay attention. The bill says: “Your server today was MARTIN BLACKWOOD.” Underneath it, in a scrawling, spidery hand, is a brief message. 

“ _ Talk to him _ .” 

Jon folds the receipt into his pocket. He doesn’t mention it to Georgie. 

* * *

Peter is not happy. Jon had known that he wouldn’t be and yet, somehow, he still hadn’t been prepared for this. He is called to Peter’s office almost as soon as he returns to the Institute, and he goes there slowly, heart pounding in his throat hard enough to make him feel like he’s going to throw it up. 

He can feel the cold from halfway down the corridor, bleeding out of the office in great angry tendrils, sinking deeply into his bones and making him shiver hard enough that his teeth chatter. Jon shoves his hands into his pockets and ignores the feeling that no one will ever speak to him again: that one will ever want to. He did, at least, have practice at doing this - long before he was ever subjected to the thing that called itself Peter Lukas. 

By the time Jon gets to Peter’s office, every breath hurts, like drinking icy sea water in great gulps into his lungs. Jon stops in the open doorway. Peter is sat behind his desk, deceptively calm. He gestures, with one broad, weathered hand. “Shut the door Jon.” 

Jon had heard tones described as icy before, had even used the turn of phrase himself on occasion. But he doesn’t think he’d ever heard anyone really speak so coldly until Peter opened his mouth. Numb, he shuts the door, and tries not to wonder what’s going to happen to him. It’ll only make it hurt twice, in the end. 

Peter gets up, and the shrieking squeal of his chair on the hardwood floor has every hair on the back of Jon’s neck standing up. That was deliberate: he knew it was. Peter could be more silent than the stars on a clear night when he wanted to be. He clearly didn’t want to be now. He wanted Jon to pay attention. 

Jon tries very, very hard not to back away. But all this really means is that as Peter leans closer, taking full advantage of the inch or three he has on him, Jon finds himself bodily leaning back at an awkward angle, feet rooted to the ground. Peter takes Jon’s chin in his hand, and his grip is rough enough to bruise, and his eyes are as cold and blank and empty as the stillness of an Arctic Ocean. 

“I thought I told you that you weren’t to leave this Institute.” Again, Peter’s words are cold enough to sting. 

Jon tries to open his mouth, to stammer out a response through his own shivering, and fear, and the fingers still pressed bruisingly deep into his jaw. But then Peter’s other hand comes up, viper fast, and sinks into Jon’s hair. He slams Jon’s head into the door, and Jon has a brief moment to feel the lightning crack of agony before his world goes dark. 

When Jon comes to, he’s bent over. He’s naked: the air in Peter’s study is still cold enough to raise goosebumps on his skin. Blinking away the shadows from the corners of his eyes, Jon tries to move his hands and stops, jerking. His hands are bound, too tight, with coarse rope that scratches and burns into his skin - tied to the legs of Peter’s desk. Jon tries to move his ankles, but they, too, are secured. Jon doesn’t entirely mean to make the soft sound of pain and fear that escapes him, but Peter laughs anyway. 

Jon tries to crane his neck, but he can’t turn enough to see the man behind him. He tries to See, and is rewarded by Peter’s hand in his hair, slamming his head down against the desk hard enough to make his teeth ache with the impact. “None of that now, Jon. Or else I’ll have to take my time with this.”

Jon swallows, and his throat feels blistered and dry. “Take your time...with what?” He’s careful to keep the hum of compulsion from his voice. He knows how much Peter hates it. Despite himself, Jon pulls at one of his legs. It just hurts: the rope doesn’t give, and his calf tingles with pins and needles. Peter laughs again, and Jon hates him for it. 

There’s a slick hiss, and for a second Jon wonders what on earth Peter could be planning to do with a snake. But then there’s a crack of air, and the hard, stinging impact of his belt against Jon’s bare ass. Jon starts, trying to move and unable to. All he really succeeds in doing is pinching his cock, pinned awkwardly between his hips and the desk. Jon grits his teeth. 

Peter hits him again, and again. At the tenth stroke, Jon thinks he isn’t going to stop but that perhaps he can bear it. At the twentieth, Peter is beginning to layer bruises onto bruises, and Jon is breathing small sounds of pain between gritted teeth. At the thirtieth, Jon starts to cry, eyes squeezed shut as his bottom half goes numb. At the fortieth, Peter has broken his skin: Jon can feel the white hot agony of his flesh tearing, and then the tickling itch of blood trickling down his ass and inner thighs. He has long since stopped trying not to make a sound. Jon is vaguely aware of a voice, babbling - high and hysterical, apologising and begging and pleading through sobs and quick, sharp, shouts of pain. Jon does not want to identify that voice as his own. 

At the fiftieth stroke of Peter’s belt, Jon doesn’t know when this is going to end. He doesn’t think he can take any more of this, but he also knows he cannot escape. His wrists and ankles are rubbed raw, bleeding a little themselves from his attempts to writhe and flinch away from the next blow. His legs and arms are numb from being held in the same position for too long. He isn’t sure he’ll be able to walk. 

Peter hits him again, and Jon jerks, and the ropes creak and the desk shifts and his body burns and he needs, more than anything else, to be anywhere other than where he is. 

And then suddenly he is. Jon finds himself dislodged: one second he’s in Peter’s office, throat raw from shouting, eyes wet with tears, lips sticky with his own snot. And then he isn’t. He’s clean, and weightless and the pain is a distant memory that’s happening to someone else. Instead, he finds himself high up in the Archives, lodged in the corner of a ceiling, Looking down at a familiar mop of curly, ash-blonde hair. 

“Martin.” Jon breathes, and hopes his body doesn’t. Martin doesn’t seem aware of his presence, and Jon has read enough about out of body experiences to think that it’s unlikely that he will. So instead he Watches. He watches Martin ignore half a cup of tea, going cold on the desk beside him. Watches him hunch over a statement, scribbling quick notes in the familiar, clumsy, spidery hand Jon had spent so many irritated weeks struggling to decipher. He watches Martin leaf through papers and cassettes and folders, double checking case numbers, occasionally turning to his laptop for a brief or prolonged enquiry. 

Something in Jon grows quiet, floating there. Half of him wants Martin to notice him, but most of him is content to just watch, and know that he’s safe. So he does.

Jon doesn’t know how long it takes Peter to stop hitting him; only that he’s brought back to his body by the quick jerk of Peter’s hips as he thrusts inside him, dry and unprepared. Jon has half a second to wonder how the hell he isn’t tired, and another half to remember that he’s a monster. And then Peter’s fingers are digging into his bruised flesh, and he’s fucking him too hard into the desk, ignoring the way Jon shouts and whimpers as he pulls Jon’s body against the ropes, chafing his ankles further and grinding his hips into the hard edge of the wood. Sometimes Peter slaps his ass, just for the hell of it - just to hear Jon scream as his skin flares up in white hot pain, retracing the fresh lines of cuts and bruises left by his belt. One of Peter’s hands sinks into Jon’s hair, pulling his head back until his neck hurts and Jon can barely shout past the angle, can hardly breathe, wrists pulling him down as his back pulls up and his lower body jerks and shudders, contorted around the wood of the desk.

Jon doesn’t know how long it takes. He tries to go back to Martin again, but every time he thinks he’s found the clarity that let him slip free of his skin, Peter returns with a new, fresh pain and he has to begin again. 

When Peter finally, finally cums inside him, Jon sobs with relief, body heaving and shuddering as Peter lets go of his head and he presses it against the cool wood and leather of the desk, breathing in the smell of it and sucking in great, gulping breaths. His body won’t stop shaking, and were he not tied to the wood he knows he would’ve collapsed onto the floor - when? An hour ago? Long since, regardless. 

Peter’s fingers dig into Jon’s tortured ass as he slowly rolls his hips, fucking himself through his orgasm, almost silent. When he finally pulls out, he slaps Jon’s ass again and Jon jumps, unable to stop the hoarse whimper that falls out of his mouth. 

Peter’s fingers sink into Jon’s hair, and vomit jumps into the back of his throat as he leans down - his still buttoned shirt pressed against Jon’s bare back. Peter’s fingers twist, painfully, and Jon just tries to breathe. “Do not disobey me again, Archivist.”

Hopelessly, Jon knows that he won’t. He nods, and fresh tears spring to his eyes, stinging. Peter pauses, fingers still twisted in his hair. “I need to hear you say it, Jon.” 

Jon wants to kill him. Instead, he nods, and tries to clear his throat. His voice is barely a whisper, and it hurts to speak. It takes a few attempts to get the words out, and Jon feels himself flush with shame. With his eyes squeezed shut, he manages. “Yes, Peter.” 

The fingers in his hair twist, not quite painfully but in warning. “Go on.”

Jon wets his lips, which sting with dried blood and snot. They taste disgusting. “I will not disobey you, Peter. I’ll stay inside the Institute.” 

Peter pats his head, and it’s almost fond - the casual, heavy handed gesture of a man petting his dog. “Good boy.” 

He makes a gesture, and the ropes around Jon’s wrists loosen and slip to the floor with a dull thud. Jon weeps with relief, fingers stiffly uncurling from the fists into which he’d curled them. From the corner of his eye, he can make out the half moon cuts in his palms that his fingernails had made there. He can’t remember making them. 

For a moment, Peter stands to the side and watches as Jon weakly, stiffly tries to push himself up from the desk. His legs wobble and bend. His arms burn as the blood comes rushing back into them too fast. Jon falls forward onto the desk, pressing his nose and forehead into the leather, and lets himself cry tears of helpless frustration as he tries again to stand. 

“Much as I’d love to stay and watch,” Peter says, calmly, “I have places to be. I trust that you can see yourself out.” There’s a faint pop, and Jon feels the pressure in his eardrums fluctuate. And then Peter is gone. 

Jon lets himself breathe, hooked around the desk, aching and bleeding. Then he slides onto the floor, crumpling to his knees and ignoring the bruising impact of the fall. Naked and hurting, Jon leans back against the desk. His legs and arms still feel numb. He’s dizzy with pain and dehydration. He’s too hot, and he knows he can’t stand. Not yet. Jon lets himself slide onto his side to avoid putting any pressure onto his wounded ass. More tears trickle down his cheeks, over his nose and into his hairline, tickling as they go. Jon is half surprised he has any tears left. 

He stares at the closed door, and nearly hopes that someone will find him. He thinks of Martin. And then he shuts his eyes, and finds himself again hovering above him. Martin is writing now: Jon can tell by how often he pokes his well chewed biro into his mouth, running nervous hands through his already messy hair. 

Jon will need to stand. He’ll need to stand, and dress, and find his way out of here. He’ll need to clean his wounds, and treat them as best he can, and lie down even if he can’t find it in himself to sleep. But for now, he lets himself slip free of his body. For now, he stays with Martin. And he watches.

He goes to Martin often, after that.


	4. Chapter 4

Jon doesn’t want to see Melanie. He doesn’t want to see anyone, but he especially doesn’t want to see Melanie, because Melanie wants to hurt him and he’s not sure how much more hurt he can take at this point before he shatters into the thousand pieces he should’ve crumbled into years ago. 

So he thinks it’s a bit of a universal joke when he steps through an oddly yellow door without thinking and finds himself three storeys deeper into the Institute than he should be, in the cool dim light of the tunnels, face to face with Melanie and a knife. 

Jon turns back, too bewildered to be scared yet, to look for the door he’d just come through. It’s gone. Maybe not the universe’s joke, then. But something’s, certainly. 

Melanie glares at him, but her anger lacks the rabidity it had had before they’d taken the Slaughter’s bullet from her leg. She still looks like she could kill him, certainly, but at least these days she’d know that she was doing it. Jon isn’t sure what it says about him that he finds that fact comforting. 

“What happened to your hands?” Melanie’s tone is flat, and apparently disinterested - but Jon knows her well enough by now to hear the veiled curiosity in her voice. Or maybe he’s just fine tuned to that particular emotion. 

He glances down: at the gauze that wraps his wrists and palms. It’s been nearly a week since Peter attacked him. He can walk again, which is nice. But the cuts are still healing: and with all the dust and dark powers in the Institute, he doesn’t want them getting infected. However appealing the idea of bringing the Slaughter to the Lonely might be. 

“Oh, nothing.” Jon doesn’t think Melanie really wants to know, and it makes it easier to lie to her. It’s not like she cares about him. Not any more. He doesn’t blame her. 

Melanie raises her eyebrows. In the dim light of the tunnels, her pupils are so big that her eyes are almost black. “Get kidnapped again?” 

Jon is so surprised he answers honestly. “What? No. No.” He pauses, thinks about it. “Haven’t been kidnapped in a while actually. Probably due for one. Need another stamp on my frequent flyer card.” He’s mixing metaphors, but what’s a little more worrying is that Jon finds the idea of being kidnapped again genuinely amusing. Maybe it’s just that he finds it hard to imagine anyone could hurt him more severely than Peter Lukas has. 

“So how the hell did you hurt your wrists?” Melanie’s tone is sharp, and her voice bounces off the walls of the tunnels, ringing in the cold, damp air. 

Jon shrugs, grasps desperately for a lie. “I’ve been experimenting with BDSM?” It’s a bad lie, and in poor taste, and a hysterical laugh that doesn’t feel quite his own tries to bubble its way out of his chest. But by that point Melanie has finished processing her surprise and she punches him. 

Jon had been hurt before. He’s learned how to fear hands and other things flying towards him with the intent to harm. But he’s never flinched as violently as he does then, and it’s what makes him realise, in his blind panic as he spasms backward into a ball and braces himself for more, that this is the first time someone’s tried to hurt him since Peter first caught him. 

For a second, the tunnel is quiet, and there’s nothing but Melanie’s heavy breathing and the soft rustle of clothes as Jon uncurls, face burning with embarrassment, halfway to another lie to try and save his pride. Melanie’s body is curled and poised, tense as a coil, rigid as a claw - all sharp lines and angles. She looks at him, and Jon can see the murder in her eyes: in the sharp set of her jaw. 

“Who did this to you?” 

Jon shakes his head. “No one.” Because even with his fear and her anger, he doesn’t want Melanie gone. She doesn’t deserve that. And he doesn’t want it to be because of him. 

Melanie advances, and Jon backs up, tripping over something on the floor. For once he doesn’t look to see what it is, is just vaguely grateful it wasn’t something sharp as he keeps his eyes fixed on Melanie. 

“Don’t lie to me Jon. Someone has done this to you. Tell me who.” 

Jon keeps shaking his head, unsure if his panic is because of Peter or Melanie or both of them. His hand reaches out behind him, palms sweating, and he’s nearly stunned to find the round brass knob of a door that hadn’t been there at his back, just when he needs it. “N-no one. Melanie, I promise, it’s nothing.” 

Melanie’s face twists in rage. “Tell me who. I can kill them for you, Jon. Let me kill them.” She spits the words between gritted teeth.

Jon twists the handle, and in a moment of blind panic or stupidity or both, says, “you can’t kill him.” 

And then the door swings open and there’s a rush of air and Jon is back in his office. Jon falls through gracelessly, and Melanie tries to follow, but then the door slams shut as if shoved by an invisible force and, with a twist of reality that makes Jon’s head hurt, disappears. 

He thinks he hears Melanie shouting, “ _ HELEN! _ ” But by that point his heart is beating too fast and his world is spinning and he can’t actually breathe and he’s crouching down and just trying to remember what it feels like to be, again. 

It takes too long, or maybe no time at all, for Jon to find his way to the other side of his panic attack. His vision is blurred, and his head hurts, and his cheeks are wet with tears he doesn’t remember shedding. He feels wrung out and hollow, and he makes it as far as his desk before collapsing into his chair. The urge to just sleep, then and there, and take whatever nightmares may come, is nearly overwhelming.

Instead, Jon fumbles for the first piece of paper he can find. A tape recorder clicks on. “Statement of Maximilian Rose, regarding a well found at the bottom of his garden. Statement given 12th June 1954. Audio recording by Jonathan Sims.” Jon pauses, because this is still true, and there’s a comforting power in that. 

“The Archivist.”

* * *

Peter gives him a break after that. It’s nearly a month until Jon sees him again, and even when he is inevitably called back into his office, the monster is almost gentle. Jon is half inclined to think that Elias had a word with him after the brutality of his last attack, but he doesn’t think of himself as that naive, and he doesn’t bother to Look. 

Instead, he lets Peter kiss him and push off his jacket, hands running hungrily over his sides. Jon doesn’t think he’ll ever be comfortable with this...arrangement, but he is at least numb enough to this that he can slip away without too much difficulty. So he does, and he goes to find Martin. 

This time he’s in the break room, drinking a cup of tea and playing some sort of card game with Basira. Both of them are smiling a little, and Jon realises with a deep ache that it’s been months since he’s seen either of them do that. For a while, he just lingers - distantly aware of Peter pushing off his clothes and manoeuvring him against the wall. 

Half worried he’ll be pulled back, Jon focuses on Martin, moving to see his hand. Basira thinks she’s going to win - he can tell that much, she’s been fooled by Martin’s polite, bashful smiles and his modest self-deprecation. She’s not the first to underestimate him. Jon grins, looking at Martin’s cards - which hold at least three different ways to win this game that he knows of. He’s toying with her, letting the game stretch a bit longer just to enjoy the company of another person. Jon can relate. He isn’t sure how he ever thought that Martin was anything less than brilliant. 

Even the appearance of a small spider on Martin’s shoulder doesn’t quite shake Jon from his contentment. Even as Peter’s fingers slip inside him. Jon ignores his body, and focuses as Martin finally glances at the clock and wins in one round, amiably apologising in the face of Basira’s fury as she guesses at what might have just happened. 

Then she, too, looks at the time and grabs her coat - with what is both a promise and a threat to a rematch. Jon almost laughs as Martin gives her a playful two-fingered salute and Basira flips him off, grinning. Then Martin is alone in the kitchen. He picks up the cards, and shuffles them before slipping them back inside the box. 

Peter lifts Jon’s leg and slips inside him, fucking him slowly against the wall of his office.

Jon ignores the distant memory of the wall scratching against his skin, the now familiar ache of being pushed open, the already growing cramp in his leg. Instead he focuses on Martin. Martin who has got up, and gone to the kettle, and is now leaning against the counter with his mug in his hands, looking pensive. Jon can’t see the spider any more, but he thinks it’s still there. 

Peter bites a bruise into Jon’s neck, and in the kitchen the kettle starts to boil. Jon watches steam spill out of it, faintly obscuring the battered blue health and safety notice Elias had plastered over the sink, as if it would ever make a damn bit of difference.

And then Martin looks up, a faint, warm smile on his lips and a pink blush grazed across his cheeks. He looks right at Jon, or where Jon would be, and his smile is a gentle one. “I know it’s you, Jon. You could - “ 

But Jon doesn’t hear what Martin thinks he could do, because he’s rearing back into his body with a gasp, stunned and shaken. Peter, balls deep inside him, just laughs and fucks him again, clearly thinking Jon’s reaction had something to do with him. For once, Jon is grateful for his arrogance. 

It doesn’t take too much longer for Peter to finish, this time, and Jon is grateful to leave without further bruises. Except the hickey on his neck that makes him feel like a teenager - but Jon has dealt with worse injuries, worse humiliations and worse invasions than this by now from Peter. He can live with it. So he wipes himself off and pulls on his clothes and leaves as soon as Peter dismisses him, half running to the shelter of his office where he can panic about what it might mean that Martin saw him.

As it turns out, he doesn’t have to wait long. Martin finds him a few minutes later, looking sheepish and holding two cups of tea. Jon looks for the spider, but he can’t see it. Then again, it’d be hard to see much against the heavy marled green knit of Martin’s sweater. Martin pauses in the doorway, and with the memory of Peter’s cold hands still fresh in his mind, the respect for Jon’s boundaries that Martin gives him is so touching it almost hurts. 

Exhausted, Jon waves him inside. Martin starts to speak immediately, “look, Jon, I’m sorry about - I mean I know I shouldn’t have said anything but I’d noticed you doing it a few times and I thought it was worse if I didn’t say anything because then you’d think I didn’t know and I didn’t want to lie to you, even by omission and then -,” Martin interrupts the pleasant sound of his own burbling and frowns, setting down the tea and stepping around the desk. “You’re really flushed. And sweating. Are you alright? You look like you have a fever.” 

Sex will do that, Jon thinks, bleakly. But he shrugs instead, and doesn’t move back when Martin leans forward to press the back of his hand to his forehead. Jon takes a moment to be grateful for the turtleneck jumper he’d had the sense to pull on this morning, now hiding the bite mark on his neck.

If Peter’s touch is cold and cloying, Martin’s is soft and warm - like a hot bath after a long day. Jon can almost feel him washing away the memory of Peter, and is seized, briefly, by the insane urge to ask Martin to touch him all over - until every hint of Peter Lukas had been wiped away, and he was clean again.

But then Martin pulls back, and hopelessly Jon mentally dismisses the notion as the desperation of a madman. “You don’t have a temperature.” Martin still looks worried, but then, Martin has always looked worried - even when the most he had to worry about was Jon’s sleep schedule and diet, back when Jon had yet to realise just how precious that worry was. 

Jon shrugs, and reaches for his tea, letting it warm his sweaty palms through the smooth china of the mug. “I feel fine.”

Martin huffs and circles back around the desk, dropping into the chair opposite Jon and picking up his own mug. Jon has half a mind to worry about his caffeine addiction, but it’s hardly the worst addiction Martin could have chosen, and if it helps him survive the Institute and it’s Horrors, then Jon can only be grateful for it. 

“You’re always ‘fine’, Jon.” Martin takes one hand off his mug for the air quotes, which tells Jon exactly how fed up with his bullshit he is. Jon decides not to push it. 

Jon says, “How are you, anyway?”

Martin says, “You can keep Watching me, if you want. I really don’t mind.”

Both of them blush. Jon clears his throat, and Martin looks studiously into his mug. The spider creeps back into his shoulder, and Jon glares at it, annoyed to have a witness to his embarrassment. This has the unfortunate side effect of making Martin think that Jon is glaring at him. Immediately, he apologises. “I mean obviously you don’t have to, I don’t mean to be presumptuous, it’s just that normally if someone does something more than once it’s because they want to do it? Unless they’re doing it for someone else. Oh, god, you’re not doing it to make me feel better, are you? Because it’s kind of nice, really, but I don’t need - “

Jon interrupts Martin’s snowballing panic before it turns into an avalanche. “Martin.” Martin immediately goes quiet. Jon sighs, and can’t quite hold back half a smile. “I didn’t even think you knew I was there. How could I possibly have been doing it for you?”

“Then why were you doing it?” Martin can’t help it. Jon knows he can’t, he recognises the same bright flame of curiosity in Martin’s eyes that he sees in his own - the flame that no doubt led him to the Institute in the first place. He has to ask, because he wants to know.

But Jon doesn’t want to answer. So he shrugs, hoping it’s enough to let the question slide off his back and knowing that it isn’t. “How did you know it was me? Could you...see me?” He’s imagining himself, naked and humiliated, laid bare for Martin to see. 

Martin shakes his head - and Jon can see that he hasn’t let his question drop. That he won’t let it drop. But Martin has always been better at biding his time than Jon has. Martin has mastered the art of subtlety. Jon has always struggled to be anything other than direct. It’s one of the many things Jon has grown to realise he admires about him. 

Jon could be dense, certainly, but there were only so many times you could seek out someone else in your moments of deepest need before you began to question exactly why that person made you feel quite so very safe and warm.

Martin, meanwhile, is answering his question, “ - just kind of a feeling, really. I couldn’t see anything, just the ceiling, but I knew you were there. Somehow. I just. Did.” Martin falters to a stop, scratching the side of his head, another pink blush grazing it’s way across the plump curve of his cheek. “Does that make any sense?” He sounds faintly exasperated. 

Jon gives him a smile, half to reassure him and half just because he wants to, and nods. “I think I see what you mean.” He doesn’t, but he won’t Look. If and when he does (and he wants to, desperately) he intends to do so with Martin’s explicit permission. He wants to know Martin - wants to know every in and out of him, and knowing how badly he wants it just makes the wanting worse. But he wants to know Martin because Martin wants to tell him, not because he took it. So Jon shuts what he has come to, wryly, mentally refer to as his ‘third eye’ and focuses instead with his human ones. 

Martin’s broad, soft shoulders are slightly hunched, and his face is touched with a pinch of embarrassment. His thumb is rubbing the side of his mug, as one of the more subtle outlets for his anxiety, though Jon knows that if he lets the silence stretch too long then that nervous energy will transfer to his leg, which will begin to bounce softly under the table. Jon wonders how it’s possible to memorise a person without realising you’ve done it.

Then he says, “are you sure you don’t mind? I realise that it might be invasive.” And he’s tried not to be, but of course he realises that. “But I find it...” He grasps for the word, and doesn’t think he can find one big enough. Instead he settles, somewhat frustrated, on, “soothing.” 

That’s not what he means at all. Soothing makes it sound like he thinks of this as little more than an overpriced spa retreat. Soothing is a scented candle. Seeing Martin, really Seeing him, is the only thing keeping him from drowning. And Jon doesn’t know how to tell him that.

But Martin brightens, anyway, and his blush deepens, and Jon can’t find it in himself to find it anything other than adorable. 

(And he thinks back to half a decade ago, lying on a ratty sofa with Georgie half on top of him, smiling gently, “So you’re biromantic and asexual. That’s a thing, you know. You’re not broken.” And he isn’t, or at least not because of that. But he hadn’t expected to fall in love again.) 

“Well! Well. In that case.” Martin clears his throat. “Feel free to uh, Watch me all you want, boss.” He frowns. “Wait, no, that sounds creepy.”

Jon can’t help it this time. He laughs.


	5. Chapter 5

It takes two and a half weeks for Peter to notice. Two and a half weeks in which Peter is sometimes rough and sometimes gentle and Jon is bruised and numb but, he thinks, surviving. Peter pushes him open and Jon slips away and sometimes, when he’s alone, Martin talks to himself - and Jon knows it’s half for his benefit and lets himself be carried on the gentle river of Martin’s words, until he’s almost forgotten exactly how profoundly Peter Lukas has endeavoured to break him.

So of course it can’t last forever. Martin is burbling about a nature documentary he’d been watching the night before and worrying whether anyone in the Institute actually has a TV license, or if he’ll need to buy one so that he can enjoy the soporific effect of David Attenborough guilt free - and then Jon’s head is cracking back hard against the wall and his vision momentarily goes dark and when it clears he’s half dressed in Peter Lukas’ office and Peter looks like he could kill him. 

“Go away, did you, Archivist?” Peter’s hands wrap around Jon’s neck, and they’re calloused from the sea, and he starts to lift Jon off the ground, face white with rage. “See something more interesting, did you?” He’s spitting the words and Jon can hardly concentrate because Peter’s fingers are crushing his windpipe and his feet are kicking and Peter doesn’t seem to care, he just keeps squeezing, and Jon’s head is splitting with pain and his lungs are spasming and he can’t breathe, he can’t breathe,  _ he can’t breathe _ . 

“How dare you turn your attention away from me? How dare you?” Peter’s shouting now. Jon’s never heard him shout. He thinks, dizzily, that Peter’s finally going to kill him. Helplessly, he wishes he could’ve said something to Martin. He doesn’t deserve to find him like this.

Darkness starts to envelop his vision, and Jon can feel the hungry void of the End coming closer. He reaches out to embrace it, and something in Peter’s face changes, and he drops him. Jon falls to the floor in a heap and tries desperately to breathe. His throat is burning, and crushed. It feels like a crumpled paper straw and every breath is a Herculean effort pulled through too much pain to bear. Jon doesn’t know when he started crying, but he doesn’t think he can stop. He can barely see his own hands on the floor in front of him, and in answer to his frustration his power lets him See Peter, raising his boot, just before it comes crunching into his ribcage. 

Jon shouts in pain, curling into a ball. Peter has hurt him in a hundred ways, but he’s never just beaten him before, and through the strangulation and the relentlessness of his assault, Jon can’t concentrate for the handful of seconds he needs to slip away. So instead he bears it, curled on the floor, painfully, miserably present for every agonising second. 

And when Peter pulls him up by his hair and breaks his nose and splits his lip and then shoves him at the nearest chair, and fucks Jon while his nose bleeds and he can’t scream through the agony of breathing, Jon thinks that perhaps he has finally met his limit, and the Eye will release him at last into the death that should have taken him long ago. 

But Jonathan Sims is not a lucky man, and instead he is hurled bodily out of Peter’s office, the slammed door and rush of cold the last ringing signs of his fury. For a while, Jon lies on the floor, dizzy and dazed. 

Then he realises that the cold hasn’t gone away - that instead it has thickened, condensed into a suffocating grey fog that stretches out for miles in every direction and sinks deep and cold into his bones. He tries to ignore his mounting terror.

(Peter wouldn’t just vanish him, would he? Whatever alliance he and Elias had surely wouldn’t let him just... get rid of the Archivist. Surely.)

(Except Jon was spent, wasn’t he? Thoroughly ruined. Broken beyond recognition. What kind of Archivist would he make now? Elias had certainly killed other Archivists for less.)

Blind in his panic, Jon struggles to his feet, limping and ignoring the splintering pain in his ribcage, and his collarbone, and his fingers. Stumbling forward he reaches out, partly with his body and mostly with his mind, searching for Martin. Martin, who was always so easy to find. Martin, who appeared to him as easily as breathing, willing and safe and warm. Martin, who kept him from drowning.

Except Martin isn’t there. 

The rational scrap of thought left in Jon’s mind tells him that this is the Lonely’s domain, that his powers will not work here as well as they do in the house of the Beholding. That Martin may have been courted by the Web, but he has not yet accepted her gifts. 

But the rational part of Jon’s mind is not in control and the rest of him is screaming that Martin has abandoned him, just like Georgie, and Basira, and Melanie and Sasha and Tim and his parents and even his damned, darling grandmother who had raised him so cruelly but had at least done him the favour of raising him at all. 

But his grandmother was gone, wasn’t she? And she wasn’t coming back. And so was Tim, and so was Sasha. He’d lost them, and that was irreversible, and he could never tell them how sorry he was. 

And as for the rest not yet claimed by the End? Was there much difference, really? They walked in different worlds. The others didn’t care. They saw him as a monster. They probably knew everything - knew what Peter had been doing to him, and they’d let it happen because they didn’t care. 

Even Martin, and the agony of it was worse than any of the injuries Jon was stumbling through - even Martin had to know. With his spiders and his brilliance and his empathy there was no way he couldn’t have guessed, no way he couldn’t have known. But he’d said nothing, done nothing. Because he didn’t care. He just pretended to, because he was kind, and he didn’t want to deal with Jon’s fussing.

That was Jon’s problem, wasn’t it? He always caused such a fuss. He was a burden for those around them, and then he hurt them. And then he got them killed. No wonder no one wanted to be around him. No wonder that no one ever would again. 

If he’d just been better. If he’d just borne it, and grit his teeth. If he’d just been stronger, and quieter, and easier. He could hear his grandmother’s voice, as he wept over his first migraine when he was nine. “ _ Stop making such a fuss, Jon.” _ And when he was screaming from the nightmares when he was twelve because he thought he saw a spider under his bed. “ _ Be quiet Jon _ .” And when he fell from a tree and broke his arm when he was fourteen and he was trying so hard to be quiet about it, he really was, but his grandmother had still taken one look at his tear streaked face and tsk-ed. “ _ Honestly Jon. Pull yourself together _ .”

And he wanted to. He really did. But he was bleeding and he was alone and all around him was just nothing and it was never going to end and his chest ached worse than his fractured bones and his hollowed body and his cuts and his bruises. Because he was alone. Because he had lost them all. 

He’d fought so hard to protect them. And he’d lost them anyway. 

Jon doesn’t know how long he walks for. He just knows that in the end he gets tired. In the end he runs out of tears, and horror, and lets the numbness swallow him as he falls to his knees on the pearly grey not-ground. It’s easier like this, he thinks, blankly. At least he’s alone. 

At least no one can find him here. 

And then there’s a door. It’s bright, and yellow, and discordant in the fog. It hurts his head to look at, and tugs something in his gut. He should know what it is, he thinks. But he can’t quite grasp the thought past the despair that’s still screaming silently through his mind. 

Something steps out of the door. It looks like a woman, but its hands are wrong. It bends down, and slips its too long fingers under his back and legs. Jon tries to flinch away, but he doesn’t have much of anything left any more. 

The thing that looks like a woman certainly sounds like a woman when she says, infinitely gentle. “Come, Archivist. This place is not where you meet your End.” 

She picks him up, and Jon lets her, vaguely distracted by how easily she does it. Then she steps through the door: and the sudden rush of sound and colour and texture and heat and movement and noise is the push that sends Jon over the edge. Helplessly, he falls into the dark.

* * *

When Jon wakes up, he doesn’t know where he is. Which is strange, because despite the kidnappings and the horror, he always, always Knows. It takes him a moment to find his thoughts: he feels as if he’s hungover, or something worse. Like his brain has been scooped out and scrubbed and dropped back into his skull, almost the same but not.

It hurts. 

Jon blinks, and is relieved to find he’s somewhere dark. He lets his eyes adjust to the low light, and then tries to sit. His body sings a symphony of agony, and he gives up almost immediately. Still, his movement has not gone unnoticed. 

“You’re awake.” Helen’s voice is warm, in that strange shifting way the Distortion’s voice is. 

Job tries to speak, and finds he can’t past the pain in his throat. He chokes, and Helen steps closer, her coiling red hair slipping past her ear as she leans over him, kaleidoscopic eyes peering into his face as if he’s a riddle she’s deciding whether she’d like to solve or leave a mystery. 

She says, “don’t try to speak. The Lonely has not stolen your voice, but it is damaged. You’ll need an hour or two to recover it.” She pauses. “You should sleep.”

Jon ignores her. The memory of Loneliness and the bitter lessons it had given him is still fresh in his mind, but he has more pressing concerns than his own wellbeing. (He usually does.)

“Mel-nie?” He manages, and thinks Helen must know what he means. 

Helen’s lips curve in an amused smile. Jon wonders whether she applies the lipstick herself, or if it’s a leftover from the woman whose body she stole. “She is in my corridors. She was,” the smile falls, “angry. When she saw you. I needed to let her express it in safety.” 

“W’you let her go?” Jon tries, frustrated with the way it feels like he’s suffocating on a gag of bruises every time he tries to speak. 

Helen arches a neatly manicured eyebrow. “Of course, Archivist. I’m not a monster.” And she grins, as if at her own private joke. Jon can make an educated guess as to what it is.

Temporarily appeased, Jon lies back and takes stock of his body. It’s stiff with tape, and gauze and bandages, but he’s relieved to find that he’s clothed. And around his waist, shifted when he tried to sit, is a soft woolen blanket that Melanie must have brought down here with her. Despite himself, Jon is overcome by a wave of gratitude, and Helen’s smile mutates from mischievous to warm. She lays a cool, slender hand on his forehead, barely touching his skin. 

Jon doesn’t have the energy to move. He can almost feel the panic and anxiety bleeding through his skin and into her touch, as she soaks up the sharp edges of madness that the Lonely had forced upon him. He starts to relax, and Helen’s smile is sad. “Rest, Archivist. You’ve done enough.”

Exhausted, Jon does.

* * *

When he wakes again, he’s strong enough to leave. Helen lets him go, with a soft smile and a wave of one clawed hand. Jon can’t decide whether he resents or appreciates her compassion, and suspects that she’d find his confusion amusing. Perhaps she already knows. 

Slowly, stiffly, he stumbles his way up and out of the tunnels. He remembers his ribs breaking, remembers the sharp crack of his collarbone and the salty tang of the blood that poured from his broken nose. He shouldn’t be able to walk, but he can. 

Somehow, stupidly, the bruises are staying longer than the broken bones. Jon supposes if whatever power is healing him is not infinite, it would have to prioritise. And he needs his ribs more than an unmarked neck. He can, at least, breathe and speak again. The bruises are just an unhappy reminder, and they’ll fade in an hour or two. Probably.

It’s not like he actually knows how any of this works. 

Jon is so deep in his own mind that he nearly doesn’t notice Martin, coming out of one of the staff bathrooms and heading back towards his office, smiling absently at his phone. But then Martin nearly walks into him, and Jon jerks back in instinctive fear.

He sees that it’s Martin, and relaxes, a reaction as natural if not moreso than the fear. But then the Lonely and its tortures roar in the back of his mind. Helen had taken the edge off, but he still remembers the feeling: the sense of being completely abandoned. The certainty that it was his fault. 

Martin, meanwhile, was frowning. “Jon, what happened to your neck?”

His voice is uneven, and louder than normal, and Jon flinches and then winces with the pain of it. He’s still not quite healed yet. Martin’s eyes widen at his reaction, and then narrow, focusing on something on his shirt. 

“Is that blood?” Martin doesn’t wait for the inevitable denial that they’ve both become accustomed to. “What happened?”

Jon could almost believe he’d been compelled, if he didn’t know that was impossible. As it was, he suspected that it was the deep and irrevocable love he had for the man standing in front of him that has him answering, as honestly as he can. “I got hurt.” His throat is still hoarse, and it’s quieter than he means it to be. 

Martin’s expression crumples, and then unfolds, easing into the simple strength of determination. He raises his hand, then hesitates. “Can I touch you?”

Jon nearly weeps. 

Instead, he nods. Martin reaches out and very, very gently loops his hand around Jon’s elbow. Jon presses into it as if it’s a lifeline, and he’d nearly surrendered to the sea. He supposes that isn’t so very far from the truth. 

Infinitely tender, Martin guides Jon into the archival assistants’ office. Basira isn’t there, and she’s the only other person that might’ve been. Tim’s desk is still untouched. Jon has no idea when any of them will have the strength to clear it. Tim was the one who’d done Sasha’s. 

Martin guides Jon into the chair behind his desk, and gently presses him down into it - his gestures more like careful suggestions than any kind of force. Jon could shrug away Martin’s grip more easily than a butterfly. He doesn’t want to. And when Martin moves to pull back and sit across from him, Jon surprises both of them by reaching up and catching Martin’s hand in his. “Don’t.” 

It says something about the gravity of the situation that Martin doesn’t even blush this time. Instead he leans, awkwardly grabbing Basira’s chair with one hand, and pulls it closer - keeping his other hand on Jon’s arm like an anchor. 

Martin sits, and after a moment of studying Jon’s face - with that same intelligence that Jon had too often missed when they first met - he moves his hand down Jon’s arm and very gently winds their fingers together. For a moment, both of them are quiet. 

Jon has never thought of the Archives as particularly well heated, but they feel warm now. Compared to the fog, Martin’s hand is practically burning. With it, Jon thinks he can understand something of the particular madness of the Desolation. Better to feel something than nothing at all. 

Martin waits until Jon meets his eyes. They’re still the same hedgerow green and brown they’ve always been, and Jon is still surprised it took him this long to realise how beautiful they were. 

“Are you going to tell me what’s going on?”

Jon doesn’t know how to keep fighting. He feels like it’s been decades. He’s not sure he can survive much more of it. So he says, hopelessly. “He’ll hurt you.”

Martin purses his lips. His grip tightens fractionally around Jon’s hand. Jon has seen Martin angry, but it’s clear in this moment that he’s trying very hard to hide it. “The person who did this to you?” 

Jon nods, because it’s easier and safer than explaining. Above them, the light in the ceiling hums. 

Martin takes a deep breath. a spider crawls onto his knee. Jon doesn’t even flinch. Somehow, impossibly, he’s grown accustomed to it. “This man told you that if you said anything to me about what he was doing, he’d hurt me. To punish you?” It’s hardly a question. They both know Martin knows the answer.

“Is this man Peter Lukas?” 

Jon can’t breathe. That’s answer enough for Martin, though. For the barest fraction of a second, Jon thinks he sees more eyes on Martin’s face than there should be. Then Martin takes a long, steadying breath, and Jon thinks that perhaps, if he really wanted to be, Martin could be far more terrifying than anyone had ever given him credit for. 

He’s still holding Jon’s hand, though. And he doesn’t let go, even when he gets out his phone and starts typing something. “Well then. We’ll have to deal with that.” Jon thinks that perhaps, to someone who didn’t know Martin, this would’ve sounded casual. Like he was discussing a minor inconvenience. 

But Jon does know Martin. He knows him almost better than anyone. He Sees him. And he can hear the venom in his voice, deadly and sharp. 

For a moment, Jon half believes they could stand a chance. But then he remembers the terrible, terrifying Not Place Peter had sent him to. 

Jon knows he should warn Martin. Tell him to leave him in Peter’s hands and save himself. Give him some lie about how Jon was happy, really, and the bruises weren’t as bad as they looked. 

But Jon is tired, and he’s hurt, and just this once he wants to be selfish. He wants to let Martin Blackwood save him.

So he holds his hand, and he says nothing, and he tries not to let his fears eat him alive. 


	6. Chapter 6

It takes Martin 72 hours to get rid of Peter Lukas. It starts with a call to a prison guard, who Martin greets over the phone, blushing, by his first name (“Andrew”) and with whom he flirts just a little, back turned to Jon as he does it, before making a request. Jon thinks he has it in him to be jealous, but then Martin makes his request and Jon is too busy processing his own surprise to make room for anything else.

Martin either doesn’t notice Jon’s surprise or makes the executive decision to deal with it later, because as soon as he’s off the phone he’s on his feet, heading in the direction of Artefact Storage, fingers still entwined with Jon’s. And Jon hasn’t explained why he needs this - hasn’t told Martin about the great grey void or the sudden cold shock of loneliness or how even now it sort of hurts to look at him. But Martin’s doing it anyway, and Jon doesn’t have the strength to pull away.

So he follows Martin, down into the tunnels, and barely keeps pace with him as he makes a beeline for one box in particular. Whilst Martin rifles around, Jon tries very hard not to notice the yellow door that’s appeared in the wall to their left.

After what feels like half an hour of rummaging, Martin makes a soft, triumphant sound and Jon squeezes his hand on instinct more than anything else. Martin looks surprised, but squeezes back, and holds up the small lead lined box he’s excavated. Jon eyes it warily. The thing is thrumming with power, and he suspects that no small amount of that power is being masked by its container.

So he’s more than a little concerned when Martin glances over Jon’s shoulder at the yellow door and smiles. “Martin.” Jon means for the word to be more warning than reproach, but he thinks it comes out as the latter. Martin just gives him an easy smile and brushes his thumb over Jon’s knuckles, tugging him forwards and knocking on the painted yellow not-wood. 

The sound echoes strangely, bouncing from corners that it shouldn’t, and then the door swings open. The tunnel beyond is dark, and colder than the one they’re standing in, but Martin doesn’t hesitate before he steps over the threshold. Heart in his throat, Jon follows. 

Helen appears as if from nowhere. Jon jumps, but if Martin’s surprised he doesn’t let it show. “It’s nice to see you Helen. How’ve you been?” He sounds sincere, and Jon looks at him to see if he can spot the lie. He’s mostly confused when he can’t. 

Helen returns Martin’s smile with one of her own, but she’s clearly distracted - glancing from the box in his hand to somewhere else, further down the tunnels and into the dark. “Where did you get that?” Her voice bleeds madness around the edges. 

Martin’s smile sharpens, like a digital image pulling into focus. “The Institute is full of all sorts of interesting things. Have you seen Melanie?” 

Helen gestures with a jagged hand, and it doesn’t take long for the shape of Melanie’s too-thin body to materialise from the shadows. She looks hungry, and angry, and pale - and her expression draws tight when she sees Jon, her dark eyes sticking to the bruises that haven’t quite faded from his neck. (They’re a chain of green and yellow now, and he’d be embarrassed if he hadn’t gone far past that when he’d decided to accept Martin’s help,and whatever else might come with it.) 

Martin steps in front of Jon. It’s not exactly subtle, but Jon isn’t sure he means it to be. Mirroring him, Helen moves back towards Melanie. Jon is reminded, ludicrously, of a hostage negotiation. 

Melanie says, “are you alright?” 

It takes Jon a moment to realise that she’s speaking to him. He goes to reply, ready to assure her on instinct. Martin cuts across him.

“No, he’s not.” Jon glares at him, but Martin squeezes his hand in a gesture that can only be interpreted as ‘trust me’. Reluctantly, Jon does. 

Melanie’s sharp gaze focuses on Martin, instead, like a hawk on a mouse. Helen watches with something that isn’t quite amusement curling her lips. “Who did this?”

“Peter Lukas.” 

Helen does not look surprised. Melanie snarls. Martin doesn’t smile. Instead he opens the box. Jon feels the sudden scream of blood-rage-power-fury hit him like a physical force. Melanie moves forward on instinct, and Martin pulls the box back towards his chest, just out of her reach. 

“Martin.” The word is a barely restrained warning, and Melanie has her teeth bared. Martin doesn’t flinch. 

“Will you help me?” Martin glances at Helen. “Both of you?”

Helen smiles and says, “Of course.”

At the same time as Melanie replies with a scowl. “Obviously.” 

Martin nods, apparently satisfied, and sets the box down on the table. Melanie goes to reach for it, and Martin holds out his hand, and for half a second Jon thinks he can see the faintest shimmer in the air around Martin’s fingers. “Don’t touch it until we’re gone.”

Pouting a little, Melanie slouches back and folds her arms. She huffs, and blows a strand of hair out of her eyes. “Fine.” Her eyes are glued to the old, rusty knife inside the box. But as Martin pulls Jon away, back and out of the tunnel, towards the yellow door Helen has given them in the wall, Melanie raises her voice and calls his name. “Jon.”

Jon pauses and turns back to her. Melanie is still looking at the knife, and Helen is watching Melanie. “You’re an ass.” Jon huffs a short breath of a laugh. Melanie finally looks up. “You’re an ass. But you didn’t deserve any of this.” Melanie pauses with a twist of her pursed lips. “And...we’re your friends. It’s ok to let us protect you sometimes.” 

Jon opens his mouth to tell her that no one can protect him any more, but then Martin is stepping through the door and Melanie is reaching for the knife and the door is swinging shut behind them. They’re back in Martin’s office again, and Martin turns to Jon with a shaky smile - and as amazing as he can be, Jon’s slightly relieved to see a hint of the nervous, bumbling man he knows so well. 

“I think that worked out. Don’t you?” 

Jon stares at him. “How did you know what that knife was?” He doesn’t mean for the compulsion to spill into his voice, not really. But he’s been biting back too many questions, and at this point Jon thinks anything he said would have rung with the same humming power.

Martin blinks. “I thought we might need to be armed, so I’ve been taking stock of the appropriate weapons.” Then he frowns. “Did you just -?”

Jon slumps, fingers loose in Martin’s hand, and feels guilt wash over him like a cold tide. “Yes, Martin, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to do it, I’d just been holding back too many - “

Jon stops when he feels Martin’s hand, large and soft and warm, land on his shoulder. Martin waits until Jon meets his eyes, and gives him a soft smile. “I was just thinking that it would normally have taken me three times as long to explain. That’s all.” Jon tries to smile back. It’s harder than he wants it to be. 

So Martin lets go of his hand, and Jon thinks he’d have fallen into panic right then and there if Martin’s other hand wasn’t still squeezing his shoulder. Martin puts both hands on Jon’s shoulders and leans down and close, so close Jon can feel his hair tickling his forehead. Martin looks into his eyes and says, “Jon. I. You matter to me, ok? I’m not going to hate you for doing something you can’t control half the time. And even if you could control it, I wouldn’t blame you for wanting to know where the hell I found a weapon soaked in eldritch power that’s going to make our friend better at murdering people.” Martin’s mouth curls up at the corner in a self deprecating smile. Jon just listens. It helps. “Our lives are categorically insane. And.” Martin hesitates, chewing his lower lip. “Whatever’s happened to you, recently. I don’t blame you for wanting the full picture. You can ask me anything, always. I have nothing to hide from you.” 

Martin’s words are fierce, and Jon can’t help but think of the one answer he thinks Martin might want to hide from him. But he doesn’t ask the question, because Martin is warm, and he’s blocking off the room, and Jon is surrounded by him and it would normally be uncomfortable but right now it’s exactly what he needs. So he moves closer, and pretends not to see the way Martin blushes, and presses his forehead into Martin’s chest, and closes his eyes. 

After a long moment, in which Jon can hear nothing but the low hum of the lightbulb and the frantic thumping of Martin’s heart, Martin lifts his arms and carefully, carefully wraps them around him. Jon presses further into his embrace, breathing in the smell of wool and dust and aftershave and, faintly, Earl Grey tea. He can feel himself trying to smile. Martin is warm, and soft, and just for a moment, that’s all that Jon needs. 

*

On the seventy-second hour, Martin calls Peter Lukas. Jon is not there. This had been a point of some contention. Martin wanted Jon to be in one of Helen’s corridors, Watching. Jon wanted to be in the Archival Assistants’ Office with Martin so that he could help. Martin had won, but Jon has made Helen promise that if things went south she’d give him a door directly to Martin. She’d promised, and Jon was fairly sure she’d keep it. 

So now he was sitting directly in front of a bright yellow door that makes his head hurt even with his eyes closed, and he’s Watching as Martin picks up the phone and dials a number. Whilst it rings, Martin glances up at the ceiling and winks. Jon isn’t sure whether he wants to kiss him or kill him. 

After far too long, Peter picks up. Martin immediately folds into the bashful, awkward persona with which anyone who’s worked at the Institute for more than a month is infinitely familiar. “Oh, uh, hi Mr Lukas, I’m sorry, I hope I’m not bothering you - it’s just that I got this urgent phone call from a, um,” and Martin pauses to rifle through a blank notebook in front of him, “from a, um, Nathaniel Lukas? Is he related to you?” There’s a faint hint of a smile on Martin’s face as Peter raises his voice on the other end of the phone and Martin pulls it slightly away from his ear. When Peter’s finished, he brings it back. “Right, right, of course Mr Lukas.” Jon almost believes the fear in Martin’s voice, except that his body is still and calm. Peter, of course, doesn’t know that. “Well, um, he said that there’s been a fire? On a, um, a ship. Called...The Tundra? He sent me some more information but I’m having trouble sending it through, could you come -“ 

Martin is halfway through the sentence when Peter Lukas appears in front of him with a pop in reality, looking annoyed. Jon is distantly aware of his mouth going dry. It is at this moment that he is distinctly aware of how very acutely he had never, ever wanted Peter and Martin to be alone in the same room. 

For his part, Martin just looks up amiably at Peter and sets down the phone. “Mr Lukas. I didn’t expect you so quickly.”

Peter thrusts out a hand. “Give me the documents.” He’s half turned to leave already - and he doesn’t seem to have noticed yet that one of the three doors into the Archival Assistants’ Office is now bright yellow. 

Martin sits back in his chair. “Oh, right. About that. I lied.” 

There’s a beat of silence in which Jon is aware, somehow, of the pressure in the room increasing tenfold. When Peter speaks, his voice is barely a whisper. “I beg your pardon?” 

Martin smiles at him, wide and easy and anything but innocent. “I lied. I knew that you’d react if you thought that the Tundra was in danger, especially if you thought it was Nathaniel who’d called. Actually, I just wanted to get you into this office.” 

Peter glances around - too old and too powerful not to check for potential danger, however little stock he put in Martin’s ability to be a threat. After nothing immediately presents itself (though his gaze lingers on the yellow door), he demands, sharply, “why?”

Martin shrugs. “I guess you’ll have to find out.” 

Immediately, Peter storms forward, raising one hand in a fist, and Jon is halfway to opening the door, one eye in Helen’s corridor, the other with Martin, when Peter freezes - one arm raised awkwardly above his head. Jon focuses. It takes a second, like trying to see a mirage. But then, suddenly, it’s there. The office is covered in webs: huge, shimmering webs that form a wall between Peter and Martin and which have, now, snared Peter almost entirely. 

For a moment, Peter just stares at Martin. And then he spits, furious, “ _ spiders _ .” 

Martin blinks with all eight of his black eyes and gives Peter a little wave. “Do you know what the opposite of loneliness is, Peter?” Martin smiles, and it’s wide and sharp and terrifying. “Connections.” Then Martin reaches up, and pulls, and the web holding Peter’s arm loosens. 

Peter pulls himself free with a jerking, impatient movement and stares at Martin, red faced and breathless. Martin stares back, calmly, with just two eyes. “What do you want?” Peter grinds the words out from between his teeth like bones through a mincer. 

Martin keeps smiling. “I want you to leave and never come back.” 

“Is that all?” Peter’s hands are curled in fists at his sides. Fog roils in thick grey tendrils around his feet, pushing at the webs. 

Martin stands up, and walks around his desk, so that there’s less than half a foot between he and Peter. For the first time, Jon realises that Martin is slightly taller than him. Martin isn’t smiling any more. “Stay away from Jonathan Sims.”

Martin has too many arms and too many legs and Jon is a child again and he wants to look away but he can’t. Instead he stares as Martin looms over Peter, black legs twitching around his body, and smiles with black teeth. 

Peter takes half a step back. There’s a pressure in the air, like a hand pushing at the inside of a balloon. Peter scowls. “Why can’t I leave?” He still seems more angry than afraid. Martin looks human again. 

He shrugs and leans back against the desk. “You could try the door?”

Peter narrows his eyes and turns, walking for the yellow door, swinging it open and stepping through without a moment’s hesitation. Martin leans against the desk and waits. Distantly Jon thinks he can hear Melanie screaming, full of rage. He chooses not to Look.

Instead he watches as Martin gets out his phone. “Basira? Yeah, you’ll want to expect him any minute now.” Martin pauses, listening to her reply. “Great. Have fun.” 

He hangs up. A few minutes later, Peter stumbles back out the yellow door, bleeding and breathless. He’s mostly suffering from several savage looking knife wounds, but there are a few deep incisions and slashes that run in neat patterns of four or five which Jon recognises as Helen’s doing. A savage thrill of satisfaction and gratitude runs through him. 

“What the fuck was that?” Peter shouts, and Martin doesn’t flinch. He just shrugs, and glances to the right. The second open door of the office leads into a room which has nothing in it except for Georgie, sitting calmly and reading a book. (This was another part of the plan that Jon had contended, fiercely, until Georgie had put a hand on his arm and told him in no uncertain terms that she could handle it.) 

“You could try a different door?” 

Georgie waves, and the presence of The End that radiates from her is so thick and all encompassing that even in Helen’s corridor, Jon suddenly finds it hard to breathe. For the first time since he’d entered the room, Peter goes a little pale. He turns to the last door. Jon focuses, and sees the thick curtain of webs hanging there, invisible to the naked eye. He remains very, very still. 

Martin tilts his head at the open door. Its frame is painted a faded, peeling yellow. “Lucky door number three?” He offers with a teasing smile. 

Peter Lukas snarls, and the fog rears up around him like a crashing wave, and he lunges for Martin. Martin’s webs slow him but they don’t stop him - Peter has been playing this game for much, much longer than him. In her room, Georgie jumps to her feet, moving towards the office, and in a split second Jon can See it all going wrong. He sees Peter taking away the two most important people in his life. He sees himself burying their empty coffins. 

Jon opens the door. He thinks he hears Helen laughing. 

Jon takes a fraction of a second to let himself be afraid of Peter Lukas, back wreathed in twisting fog. Then he runs forward and shoves him towards the final open door. 

Peter stumbles, and that’s all it takes. The webs wrap around him and pull, and then he’s thrown into the room beyond, and the door swings shut, and there’s a twist as Helen removes the door itself. And it’s done. He’s gone. 

Martin stares at Jon, wide eyed and breathless - and Jon knows that he’s perfectly aware of how close he came to a long, painful undeath. He gives Jon a watery smile and says, “We did it!” 

And then, because it’s really been long enough anyway, Jon reaches out and grabs a fistful of Martin’s heavy knitted jumper and tugs him forward for what is not so much a kiss as a headbutt. Martin doesn’t seem to mind, though, because after the initial moment of surprise he melts into it, curling around Jon as he brings up his arms and gently pulls him closer. 

Jon thinks it’s possible that Martin is a better kisser than him. He resolves to work on that.

* * *

In another place, Peter Lukas falls bruised, bleeding and headfirst into a prison cell. Outside the door, Basira slips her phone back into her pocket, folds her arms, and allows herself the luxury of a very small smile.

Inside the cell, Elias Bouchard gets up - hands for once free of the chains that have adorned them for the past few months. He looks down at Peter, and his gaze is cold. 

“Peter. It’s time we had a little chat about what you’ve been doing to my Archivist.”

  
  



	7. Chapter 7

Three weeks later, Martin is sitting on Jon’s sofa. It’s been strange, getting used to feeling safe again - or as safe as he ever is these days. Jon expects that it will be strange for a while. 

He can’t stand passing touches any more - not from Melanie or Basira, and certainly not from strangers. He’s taken to wearing extra layers of clothing, so it’s harder to feel the accidental bumps and knocks that are part and parcel of living in the city. That, and he’s started cycling to work instead of taking the tube. He thinks Georgie would be happier about it, if she wasn’t so worried about the reason why. 

Not all of it is bad though. After that first kiss, Jon has been seeing much more of Martin - and despite the nightmares and the panic attacks and the persistent sense that someone or something is always, always touching him, Jon feels infinitely safer in Martin’s company than he does without it. He’s starting to get used to the spiders. 

That has been an adjustment for Martin too, apparently, who had suspected the Web’s courtship but had not accepted her gifts until he needed them to save Jon. Jon tries very hard not to let himself drown in his own guilt over that. He nearly succeeds. It helps, at least, that Martin is apparently delighted by the proliferation of eight-legged fiends that now follow him wherever he goes. He still says that he thinks they’re cute. 

They don’t often go out. Peter had disappeared from Elias’ jail cell in what Basira referred to as a ‘sorry state’ (and Jon Looks, and he can’t help but be a little vindicated, and relieved - when Elias looks up and starts to apologise. Jon isn’t sure whether he’ll accept that yet. He’s not sure if he ever will.) 

It was unlikely that the Lukases would pick an outright fight with the Eye, but it was certainly true that the terms on which their truce rested were no longer as friendly as they had been.

In short, the Institute had enemies, Jon had enemies, and it was safer for him to not be out late at night. This meant that their first ‘dates’, such as they were, had mostly taken place over takeaway in Jon’s flat. Jon doesn’t mind. He’s fairly sure he’d have preferred things like this, anyway. And when he learns that, along with everything else, Martin is a truly excellent cook - Jon falls just a little bit deeper in love with him.

So they’re sitting on Jon’s sofa, and Martin is looking uncharacteristically serious - which is a shame, because Jon had been rather enjoying their previous arrangement of cuddling and watching nature documentaries. But he loves Martin, so he frowns and says, “what’s wrong?” 

He’s careful to keep the compulsion out of his voice. Jon doesn’t like the idea of forcing anyone to do anything. Especially Martin, no matter how many times that he says he doesn’t mind. 

Martin takes a deep breath, and looks at his hands. Then he leans down, and fishes a tape recorder out of his bag. There’s a tape inside it. Jon doesn’t need to look. He knows what this is. 

Martin holds it out to him, but Jon can’t move, and he tries not to notice Martin’s worry as he carefully scans Jon’s features. “A few weeks ago, I found this outside Peter’s office. I thought I heard...You were inside, weren’t you?” 

Jon can’t decide if he’s having difficulty breathing or if he wants to throw up. He nods. 

Martin’s lips purse into a thin, angry line. “Right.” His grip around the tape recorder is white knuckled. He reaches out, and hesitates at the last moment before touching Jon’s knee. Jon tries not to show exactly how relieved he is by this, worried his relief would be misinterpreted. “Jon.” Jon looks up, into Martin Blackwood’s hedgerow eyes. “I haven’t listened to it.”

Something in Jon’s chest collapses, and he crumples. He’s vaguely aware that he’s not breathing right: too fast and too shallow. His hands are shaking, he thinks, and so are his shoulders, and he’s curling and curling forward into a ball and trying desperately to get more air into his lungs. 

Martin drops the tape recorder and puts his hands on Jon’s shoulders. They’re heavy and warm and solid and Jon clings to them like an anchor. After a while, he hears Martin’s voice again, as if it’s bleeding through deep water. “ -on, Jon, look at me. Breathe. In, two, three. Out, two, three, four. In, two, three. Out, two, three, four.”

Jon does so, pushing breath he doesn’t think he has out of his chest in time with Martin’s counting. 

Finally, the world stops spinning. 

He says, hoarsely, “thank you.” 

Martin smiles, a little bashful and more than a little worried. “Well, I know what having a panic attack feels like.” 

Jon shakes his head. “For not listening. Thank you.”

Martin glances down at the tape recorder. Jon studiously tries not to follow his gaze. “Yeah. Yeah, of course. I...had a feeling.” He reaches out, and very slowly - slow enough that he’d be easy to stop - brushes Jon’s hair away from where it’s stuck to his sweating forehead. “It doesn’t always think about how people feel, you know? When we see. I figured I should ask before I listened to it.”

“Please don’t.” It’s all Jon can really manage, still trying to organise his thoughts back into something resembling coherence. 

Martin nods. “I thought you’d say that. Do you want to destroy it?” 

Jon shudders. “I don’t know how.” 

Martin nods. “I’ll have a think. Do you want to take care of it, for now?”

“Please.” Martin doesn’t say anything, just bends down and hands the thing over to Jon. The plastic is cool under his hands. Jon wants to hurl it against the wall. He wants to set it on fire. He wants to stab it or blow it up or crush it or drown it or bury it or throw it off a tall building.

He wants to listen to it. 

For a long, long moment both of them are silent. Outside, traffic roars into the city night. Martin fiddles with his sleeve. “What did he do to you, Jon?” He asks the question so quietly, Jon thinks he could pretend not to have heard it. But he won’t do that. “You don’t have to tell me. But if you want to, if you can...I’m not going to judge you.” 

Jon thinks about that. He forces a laugh, and it sounds wrecked even to his ears. He watches Martin’s expression fold in concern, and it helps him clarify the thought he’s trying to form. “You might think differently of me, if I do. I’d rather that you didn’t.”

Martin’s expression is fierce when he looks up. “There is nothing in this world or any other that Peter Lukas could do to make me see you as anything other than you are, Jonathan Sims.”

Jon’s chest aches. He glances past Martin, at the window behind him - and the half dead plant on the sill. “And what’s that?”

Martin reaches forward, and Jon doesn’t move away when he reaches up to cradle Jon’s cheeks, looking directly into his eyes. “You’re a bit of a prick. And a self destructive idiot.” Jon scowls, but Martin continues, smiling to show he’s teasing. “You’re a bigger nerd than I am, which is saying something, and your social skills are worse.” 

“Martin, if this is just going to be a series of insults then - ,”

“You’re brilliant.” Martin’s thumbs brush over Jon’s cheeks. “You’re really, truly brilliant. You’re funny. You’re one of the kindest people I’ve ever met. You’re one of the bravest men I’ve ever known.” Martin leans forward and presses his forehead to Jon’s. Jon shuts his eyes, and Martin whispers in the space between their lips, breath falling hot over Jon’s nose and chin. “You’re the man I love. Nothing is going to change that.” 

Jon lets himself take a second to just feel Martin’s touch, close and safe and warm. Then he wraps his hands around Martin’s wrists, and tilts his head, and kisses him. Martin smiles when he does so, and Jon looks up into his hedgerow eyes and says, somewhat incredulous. “What on earth did I do to deserve you?”

Martin snorts. “Something stupid, probably.”

Jon grins, and then he shifts, and Martin gets the hint, wrapping his arms around Jon and letting him lean back into his chest. With Martin’s arms around him, one hand stroking his hair whilst the other rubs circles over the back of his hand, Jon tries to decide where to start. 

He feels like his organs are shivering. He knows his hands are shaking. But he thinks he needs this. So he stares at the wall, and he takes a deep breath. “Just over three months ago, Peter Lukas called me into his office. I’d misfiled a statement, and he wanted to...He said he wanted to talk to me about it. That was a lie.”

It’s not easy, that night, or the hundreds after. But a year later, Jon is lying in bed next to Martin, and he realises that he hasn’t dreamt of Peter Lukas. The man hasn’t even crossed his mind. 

In bed next to him, Martin lies still - features eased in an expression of total comfort. His long limbs are spread across the bed, and his t-shirt has ridden up over his belly. Moonlight spills into his hair and makes it silver. Martin snores, softly, and Jon is utterly, hopelessly in love with him.

And Jon thinks that maybe he is going to survive this, after all.


End file.
